


Floating World

by Jane St Clair (3jane)



Category: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-08
Updated: 2011-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:58:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3jane/pseuds/Jane%20St%20Clair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Qui-Gon wanders off.  Obi-Wan gets lonely.  Qui-Gon<br/>comes back.  Obi-Wan is mindful of the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Floating World

When he'd been very small, he'd been relentlessly insomniac.  So  
much so that for years he hadn't believed he slept at all.  He  
only laid in the dark for hours at a time, listening to the  
breathing of everyone else in the creche.  And he'd become  
familiar with the details of the night: the hiss of sheets  
slipping over each other, the hum of the heating registers, adult  
feet moving through the hallways outside.  Very occasionally,  
someone soft-footing through the children's sleep-rooms would  
brush a hand over him and realize that he was still awake.  Of  
all the initiates, only he knew that the creche-Masters checked  
on the little ones three or four times a night.  The silence in  
the Force of a Master's movement wouldn't have disturbed even a  
warrior, let alone a sound-asleep four-year-old.

Fingers resting on top of his head.  "Why are you awake, Obi-Wan?"  

And a very small shrug from him, because he didn't know why.

He remembered being lifted and held in adult arms, cradled across  
a soft-robed lap in a rocking chair.  He remembered his head against  
a big shoulder, he didn't know male or female, and being  
rocked, sometimes for hours.  Sometimes a voice talking to him,  
telling him a story.  Not something for him to pay attention to  
and learn from, only words to calm him and make him drift, a  
voice pushing him towards sleep with long, air-thin touches of  
the Force.

As a working Padawan, he didn't have the luxury of that drifting,  
and he had more than enough mental discipline to make himself  
sleep almost instantly when he chose.  In the field, if he was  
going to be any kind of partner for his Master, he had to be  
rested, even if all he got were catnaps in the midst of a flight.  

In the Temple, he slept in Qui-Gon's quarters, usually, tucked on  
the pallet across from his Master's bed.  He had quarters of his  
own, but he'd never used them for anything more than storage.    
His whole experience of the Temple was sleeping in shared space.    
Privacy was infinitely less important to him than the contact  
between Jedi.  But in seven years, he had managed to fool his  
Master only a handful of times on any subject, and his ability to  
counterfeit sleep was not one he cared to match against Qui-Gon's  
perceptive powers.  So it was only a few times a year, when his  
Master was out and he slept in their bedroom alone, that he was  
able to drift to sleep naturally, slipping around the edge of  
consciousness for hours and listening to the quiet Temple sounds  
that lasted long into the night.

He'd never asked where Qui-Gon went when he was gone all night.    
As an adolescent, he'd assumed that his Master was working, or  
dealing with the Council.  As an adult, he understood that his  
own presence in Qui-Gon's bedroom meant that his Master had gone  
elsewhere to meet his lover, or lovers.  Obi-Wan had never asked  
who, when, how many.

When he'd first acknowledged that his Master had a life beyond  
their quarters and training grounds, he'd had to find a place for  
that knowledge in his own world-arrangement.  The first emotional  
wave-shock had been a child's jealousy, wordless resentment of  
any time that Qui-Gon did not spend with him, and it had been the  
easiest to release.  The second had a kind of relief that the  
sexuality he'd sometimes seen as an imperfection in himself was  
comfortably, if quietly, practised by others in the Order.

The third had been complete shock that the person at the centre  
of his world could be a sexual being as well as an object of  
worship.

Shock because it made him think back through his own conduct, and  
what he saw in himself was more disturbing.  Like most Jedi-  
raised children, he had no memory of his parents; he'd been hand-  
raised by the creche-Masters, then by a legion of teachers and  
counsellors who had eventually given him over to Qui-Gon Jinn.    
And from any of them, he had been able to demand the casual  
touches and petting that a small boy could expect to receive from  
his family.  Hands on his shoulder, fingers ruffling his hair,  
the right to settle in someone's lap and be held -- something  
that he had only given up when his pre-adolescent dignity had  
given him a little reserve.  But even then, he had still  
practically begged for attention, and shivered with quiet  
happiness whenever someone hugged him spontaneously.  The most  
pure thing he could remember from childhood was nighttime in the  
Initiates' dormitory, with a roomful of children curled up  
together in a heap on two or three beds, talking quietly.  How  
the Force ran through their body contact like an electric breath.

His expanding reserve had long since curtailed those kinds of  
displays in any kind of a social setting, but he hadn't outgrown  
his need for physical contact at the same rate.  That need meant  
that he arched into any touch of his Master's.  That he rested  
casually against the larger man when they were in quarters.  It  
wasn't unusual for him to study in the evenings while maintaining  
some level of body contact, ankle touching ankle, or a head on  
his Master's shoulder if it was convenient and adequately clear  
that he was welcome.

And he remembered waking once in the night, when his Master had  
been out late, to find one big hand resting beside his shoulder  
and the other just touching his face.  He'd pushed up into that  
hand and rubbed his face against it like a cat.  It wasn't  
something he would have done if he'd been fully awake, but at the  
time he only knew that he'd missed Qui-Gon's presence and wanted  
to reaffirm it somehow.  There hadn't been any smell on his  
Master that night that Obi-Wan had since managed to identify as  
sex, but in retrospect he was shocked at his own conduct.  He was  
far too old for that kind of need, and his expression of it must  
have bordered on salacious.

It had been that conclusion that locked the final stage of his  
reserve into place.  He didn't afterwards reject the casual, or  
the deliberately affectionate, touches that Qui-Gon offered, but  
he stopped demanding them, and he locked himself into an  
independent posture kept him a little more apart.  At the time  
he'd only been embarrassed.  Grateful when more and more often  
Qui-Gon only smelled like smoke and faint alcohol, and not body-  
scent when he came in late.  And Obi-Wan was deliberately not-  
jealous, because he was an adult, and knew that all the forms of  
Qui-Gon Jinn's love were not his by right.

He'd never realized, though, how much he depended on the parts of  
the man that were his until he was temporarily without them.  Not  
even Qui-Gon's ability as a teacher could completely replace the  
structures of the Temple, and Obi-Wan had genuinely needed to  
work within those structures, at least for a while.  As a result,  
he'd been left behind to study the last time that his Master was  
sent into the field.  He'd buried himself in his studies, and  
looked forward to the often almost daily transmissions from the  
older man.  Qui-Gon's diplomatic work kept him close to comm  
systems, and even when exhaustion showed at the edges of his  
face, he wanted to know how his apprentice had spent the day.    
Not even checking up on him, really -- at twenty, Obi-Wan had  
long since graduated from that kind of close supervision -- just  
keeping the lines of communication between them open.

He'd let himself be comforted by those conversations, even when  
all he had to report was a day spent in meditation and  
housekeeping.  And while he missed his Master, the feeling of  
absence had settled in the last weeks into a simple fact that he  
could accept and move past.

In the small hours of the morning, though, he woke with the  
covers kicked off and his arms wrapped around himself.  He  
realized gradually that he'd been stroking his own arm, and that  
in his vague dream it had been Qui-Gon's hand on him.  There was  
nothing terribly disturbing in the thought, but when he tried to  
merge it with his own self-knowledge, something else rose.    
Outside of combat practice, no one had touched him in the three  
months his Master had been absent, and even the touches he'd  
received had only been an instructor's tap to correct the  
position of his elbows or knees.  In the Temple, he had casual  
friends, but no close ones, and few people took notice of him as  
he moved between classes.  He spent most of his time alone.

He was craving touch.  No, more than that, he wanted to be held,  
hugged, cradled against some larger body, so that he could bury  
his face in his Master's robes and breathe the steady Qui-Gon  
scent, and then go on with his day knowing quietly that his  
Master loved him.

The blankets around him were constricting, suddenly.  Obi-Wan  
shook himself free and stood up in the dark, reaching with the  
Force automatically for a sense of the room.  Qui-Gon's bedroom,  
in the absence of the Master.  He should have gone back to sleep  
in his own rooms, maybe, for the duration.  He hadn't, though,  
and the chill that ran through him now from the cold air was  
enough to determine that he wasn't going to make that trek  
through the Temple in the middle of the night.  Instead, he  
gathered up a blanket from his mussed pallet and padded out to  
the common room, installing himself on the couch there.  The  
shimmer of a Coruscant night poured up through the plasteel  
windows and made huge pools of radiance on the ceiling.  By  
following the modulations of light, he was able at least to  
meditate, and then to drift, and his place on the couch let him  
pretend that his Master was only delayed at a Council meeting,  
and that Obi-Wan was only waiting for him before going to bed.

  
(Light like water on the ceiling, flowing outward from the window  
shape into the backs of his eyes, until all of night-side  
Coruscant floated there.  Reaching out for the Force-traces of  
Qui-Gon Jinn rippling through the universe so close in the  
unifying Force that Obi-Wan could almost feel him.)

***

Jinn's transport came down in the dawn shimmer of a chemical  
atmosphere.  Obi-Wan waited in the platform's provided shelter  
for the ship to settle, bracing himself a little against the  
high-altitude winds.  Metal legs opened, touched down, folded  
again under the craft's unspeakable weight, and he had to fight  
the urge to run forward and bury himself in his Master's arms as  
soon as he came down the ramp.  No one on the platform but the  
handful of techs and mechanics and still he couldn't allow  
himself that much leeway.  He only came forward to collect Qui-  
Gon's bags when the older man descended.

There never seemed to be enough baggage resulting from trips like  
this one.  Obi-Wan had been trained in mission packing, and he  
knew that a change of clothing and a few spare lightsaber  
components truly were all that was needed, but his Master had  
been gone for months, he must have wanted other things.  The  
teapot on the highest shelf of the kitchen, a cushion for the  
small of his back so that it would ache less after hours in the  
rigid transport seats, one or two of the hand-bound books he knew  
Qui-Gon collected.  He should have had his

//padawan//

small comforts with him.

Jinn reached over and gripped Obi-Wan's shoulder for a moment,  
then swept past him into the Temple.  The Council, Obi-Wan knew,  
was waiting, as they always were, for a report.  He could  
remember Qui-Gon standing before them with bloodstains still on  
his clothes because he hadn't been given time to change before  
presenting himself.  As though they were afraid he might forget  
something if he were allowed to rinse the mission dirt away  
first, or allowed to greet and hold his student for more than  
half a moment.

The Force-flickers of resentment and anger he shunted off heated  
the airborne chemicals almost to ignition temperature, and he had  
a quick flash of green within the red-tones of the morning before  
he went indoors with a bag over each shoulder.

***

He only thought of Qui-Gon again hours later, after he'd unpacked  
and gone through the motions of his day.  In the time of his  
Master's absence, he'd passed the necessary exams, and since then  
he'd been at loose ends, eventually settling into unsupervised  
work in the dry gardens.  Their layers of sand and rock, relieved  
only by tiny desert plants, pulled at something in the back of  
his mind, as if he'd known them before he was Jedi, but the  
places they touched were too vague even to be called impressions,  
let alone memories.  

Obi-Wan meditated on the asymmetrical beauty of a dry place, and  
what he'd eventually come to was a wordless understanding that he  
wanted to share with his Master.  The thought brought a quick,  
hollow feeling, succeeded by the shock that Qui-Gon actually was  
present, just out of reach in the Council chambers in the Spire.    
So close he could almost be touched.

His Master's proximity centred him more easily than long hours of  
breathing exercises could have, and Obi-Wan let himself slide  
into the trance again, this time letting the Force-currents guide  
his meditations.

(Shimmer of Coruscant lights, the sun angling towards the  
horizon, making long patches of dark in the dry gardens,  
expanding as he slid deeper . . .

. . . sand   two suns    the bottles and pots of a traditional  
healer on the windowsill    cloth across his face to let him  
breathe    water a precious thing tasting always of animal hide  
and dust . . .

. . . walking on the rim of a canyon.  There was bright sun-heat  
against the back of his neck, and the light of a second one  
against his face, the two brilliances merging into a single  
shadow slightly in front of him and to his left.  Sand on  
everything, in his hair, inside his clothes, but he hadn't  
thought anything of it for years.  The Force said he was supposed  
to be somewhere just ahead of here, that there was something he  
had to do, but it hadn't specified where exactly, or what.  So he  
kept walking, careful of the loose rocks and questing outward a  
little with his mind for life signs.

The laser rifle he'd been taught to use as a junior padawan was  
braced across his shoulders, but he wasn't going to need it.    
Instead, he'd strung bottles from it, smelling each beforehand to  
make sure its contents were what he thought they were.  He'd  
never trained as a healer, but an armed knight drew too much  
attention even here on the Rim.  In the past -- what? ten years?  
\-- he'd learned enough about herbal medicine that he was useful  
to the desert's nomads, though too often someone died because he  
didn't dare use the Force deliberately enough to save them.  

The bottles struck one another and echoed through the canyon as  
he descended.  Tiny ringings in the dry light.  In the shade at  
the bottom, there was a crashed speeder, one that must have been  
there for years, and a few small beings crowded around it.  They  
looked up at him descending and he saw luminous gold eyes.    
Jawas, then, and one of them had burned himself on the still-  
charged battery cells when he'd tried to remove the power source  
from the wreck.  Whimpering now with his arm cradled and his back  
against the rocks.  The others ignored the injured one utterly;  
they were working to get the power source free, with the right  
tools this time.  Almost immediately, they dismissed his own  
presence and ignored him as they ignored the injured one.

And while he was bent, smearing aloe and sala-oil on the crying  
little one, he wondered what stray impulse had driven him to  
become a healer in his old age.  Certainly, he'd done enough  
damage to the universe to last two lifetimes, but . . . watching  
the flesh heal a little with the little added Force energy he  
dared to bring to bear.  Something Qui-Gon had taught him maybe,  
decades ago, with the hordes of injured animals and sentients  
he'd adopted as a matter of course . . .

. . . sala-oil in glass, ringing just inches from his ears       
brilliant light just beyond this pool of shade  home again to the  
hut where he still stored his lightsaber and his Jedi clothes and  
Qui . . .

(. . . the dry gardens.  Night brilliance pooled on the ceiling  
now, coming up from below, the hundreds of levels of the city  
glowing in the dark.)

Of all his Jedi abilities, prescience was the one Obi-Wan would  
gladly have traded away.  Too often, it told him nothing useful,  
nothing about chains of events or things that could be changed.    
Instead he got fragments like that one, pieces of possible future  
lives that haunted him for days after.  He'd have to ask Master  
Yoda to help him focus better, so that he could draw something  
out of his visions besides heaps of images and seconds of  
absolute dread.

Fear led to anger, anger led to hate, hate led to suffering, and  
suffering in turn might or might not lead to the Dark.  Some Jedi  
turned, and others simply flowed through suffering as though it  
were their natural element.  Scattered through the Republic,  
there were pockets of Jedi ascetics whose tenets included  
suffering as part of the path to the light.

Others, suffering simply broke.

When he pushed up from his knees, he had to brush sand off every  
layer of his clothing.  The dry gardens were like that.  If you  
were still enough, long enough, the sand would eventually drift  
and coat your every surface.

Obi-Wan reached out for his Master with the Force and found him  
in the slightly-other headspace that meant the man was focussed  
inward, probably reading.  He walked through the Temple towards  
that serenity, focussing on it and letting the fragments of his  
vision dissolve as he walked.

He couldn't see Qui-Gon, though, when he entered his Master's  
rooms.  Jinn's presence was a kind of low Force-hum, powerful  
enough that he must be nearby, but he didn't appear, and the  
moment pushed Obi-Wan instead towards a box of collected trip-  
artifacts stored in the bottom of the closet.  In a corner of  
that box, he found sala oil, poured it into his palms and  
massaged it into both his hands, raised them to his face.  Sharp  
smell, like aloe and cinnamon.  When he turned, Qui-Gon was  
standing in the bedroom's doorway, watching him.

"What is it, Obi-Wan?"

"Sala oil, Master.  I had a vision in the dry gardens.  Something  
. . . I thought it might be something about the oil."

Instructor voice, "What do you know about it?"

"It's an organic compound, originating in the heart of the sa'al  
plant, a moisture-absorber that grows in desert climates on  
several Rim worlds.  The oil is useful for aromatherapy and burn  
treatment, and functions as a kind of herbalist's cure-all in the  
absence of more advanced medicine."  Pause.  He let his mind  
brush against the bottle itself, and its small wooden cork,  
reading its small history.  "You bought this vial from a street  
vendor on Faiyaha'al the year before you became my Master."

"Well done, Padawan.  If you think the information will assist  
you, you may want to research the oil further."

"Thank you, Master.  Can I get you anything?"

Jinn rubbed a little at his face, and his breathing hitched as he  
stretched.  "Much as I hate to ask it of you at this hour, tea  
would be wonderful."

Obi-Wan half-bowed from his kneeling position and rose.  In the  
kitchen, he found the jar of tea leaves and boiled water,  
absently wiped down the tea pot and small cups.  He'd been taught  
how to make tea on his seventh birthday, part of his initiate's  
training.  In Master A'aren's kitchen, dimly lit, and he'd come  
so close to scalding with his arms when he jostled the pot.    
After the terror had faded, the silver-skinned Jedi had shown him  
how to manage the kettle safely, then how to prepare and present  
tea both ceremonially and in the field.  He knew how to do this  
even in a pot over the smallest fire, when a double-handful of  
hot water was the only comfort available.

He rested both hands on the filled pot for a moment, then added  
it to the tray with the cups and carried it into the common room.    
Set the lot on the low table and knelt at his Master's feet,  
poured carefully into one ceramic, handleless cup.  He bowed over  
it, kissed the edge, and presented it to the older man with both  
hands, keeping his eyes down.  He could feel Qui-Gon's brief  
hesitation, but the man accepted the tea and touched Obi-Wan's  
head briefly in thanks.  Instead of pouring for himself, though,  
Obi-Wan bent double, pressed his lips briefly into the robes  
pooled around the Master's feet, touched the skin beneath with  
one hand, then returned to an upright kneel.

Some part of him wondered why he felt the need to be so formal.    
The rituals of Master and Padawan interaction were virtually  
unchanged since the Order had been founded almost twenty thousand  
years before, but while the ceremonies of daily life were still  
taught, they had largely been abandoned in practice.  He'd abased  
himself before his Master only a handful of times before, and  
those only because he's needed to make personal requests.  He  
knew what he wanted this time, had known it for weeks, but he  
didn't expect he'd have the sheer nerve to ask for it.  

Big fingers stroked through his hair.  "What is it, Obi-Wan?"

He didn't know how to ask for this anymore.  When he was little,  
it was enough to just hold out his arms and wait for his chosen  
someone to hold him.  He had yet to discover what the equivalent  
comfort for an adult was.  Didn't even know how to voice his  
small hurt that he hadn't been granted a hug when he met his  
Master's transport.

Qui-Gon inhaled sharply, and the sound made him look up.  His  
Master had set his teacup aside and bent now to focus better on  
his kneeling apprentice.  Luminous navy eyes.  Enormous hands  
tilted his face up so that he couldn't avoid that gaze.  A thumb  
brushed from his temple down to the corner of his eye, and he  
leaned into the caress, too blatantly, too much like begging.    
But Qui-Gon only lengthened the stroke so that it ran down the  
side of his face and ended with a hand resting on Obi-Wan's  
shoulder.  Hard grip for a second, and then it pulled him  
forward, out of his kneel and up to his Master.

The beginning of the embrace was rough, but the Force-sense of  
the other man blanketed him immediately.  Obi-Wan's clinging  
anxiety, that had been part of his thought process for weeks and  
screamingly active since his vision in the dry gardens, settled  
finally, and he was able to bury himself in his Master and only  
breathe.

"I missed you too, Padawan."

Qui-Gon settled back, pulling Obi-Wan with him, so that Obi-Wan  
ended the motion sitting with his legs across his Master's thighs  
and his head on his Master's shoulder.  One big, warm hand ran  
up his back under his tunic and gently rubbed the bare skin.    
Massive fingerprints etching themselves into his flesh as he  
leaned into that touch.

He eased away, finally, but before he could move out of reach  
Qui-Gon tilted his face up and kissed him.  Ceremonial touch on  
his forehead and both cheeks, and a delicate brush against his  
lips that was entirely personal.  When he resumed his kneeling  
position, he let one hand stay resting on the older man's knee.

Qui-Gon said, "Tell me what you wanted, Obi-Wan."

Long breath.  "I would claim my Padawan's right."  Tilt of  
luminous navy that demanded he elaborate.  Blood slid to his  
cheeks' surface.  What he was asking derived from a custom that  
had only been relevant in the first centuries of the Order,  
before the construction of the Temples, when Padawan-learners had  
simply resided -- or travelled -- with their masters, and rules  
had been necessary to ensure that the students were adequately  
cared for.  "I serve you.  I have learned from you and I do love  
you.  I ask you to grant me the warmth of your bed and your body  
for this night."

He stayed kneeling with his head down, needing all the forms of  
the ritual to couch his request.  He wasn't begging for  
protection from the cold, and he was aware that in asking he ran  
the risk of suggesting that Qui-Gon did not care for him  
adequately.

Softly, "Granted."  Qui-Gon bent forward and laid yet another  
too-ceremonial kiss just at his hairline, then stood and pulled  
him up.  Almost-black folds of the robe swept around him for a  
moment, then he was standing by himself.  "When you are ready to  
sleep, you have only to come to me.  My bed is yours."  The words  
were delicately formal, but the crooked smile was familiar.  He  
bowed a little in response, closing the ritual, and watched Qui-  
Gon disappear.

He waited half an hour, centring on a bright stillness before  
following.  In their bedroom, his pallet was tucked away, and his  
Master was sitting cross-legged on the bed's loose sheets,  
watching him.  Obi-Wan waited in the doorway, just watching,  
until the larger man rose.  Every scar showing suddenly on the  
naked skin.  Obi-Wan shrugged out of his own clothes and walked  
into the offered embrace.  Long hair swept around him as  
ethereally as the robe had; it followed the forward dip of his  
Master's head as a bearded cheek was laid against his crown.  The  
hands that had grazed his back earlier simply settled on his  
shoulder blades and held him, face to shoulder, genitals to  
belly, legs close enough that he couldn't have shifted  
significantly without falling.

He was, inevitably, released briefly, and when he was offered  
that touch again, it was from a prone position.  The bed was open  
to him, and his Master rested on his side with an elbow on the  
pillow.  Reflexively, Obi-Wan bent and retrieved his own from the  
folded pallet.  For a moment he flinched, realizing he'd stepped  
out of the ceremony's borders for a moment, but Qui-Gon only sat  
up a little and reached for him.  The empty hand brushed his  
flank and curled a little to pull him in.  The other took the  
cushion out of his grip and settled it beside its mate.

Obi-Wan laid down on his side and pushed back a little, settling  
into the relaxed curve of his Master's body.  Qui-Gon reached  
down (such an enormous reach, his arms like branches stretching  
across him) and caught the bedspread, pulled it up to chest  
level.  And simply held him, letting him get used to the constant  
Force-flow between them, the close sense of another living body,  
the more immediate sensations of body hair and warm flesh against  
his back.  Only when he relaxed and let his breathing slow, the  
touches started.

Fingers brushed him, following the pattern of veins in his body  
out from his heart to his extremities, finally grasping his hands  
and massaging each finger with a jeweller's care.  It was part of  
the prescribed behaviour, intended to bring circulation back into  
cold-numb fingers, and though it wasn't necessary, it relaxed  
him.  Qui-Gon stilled eventually into a series of palm-touches,  
so that Obi-Wan could feel his body responding as each reflex was  
cued.  Heart, lungs, sinuses, flash of not-unwelcome sensation  
when the pressure focussed his prostate reflex.  He was almost  
trembling in relaxed pleasure by the time the enormous hands  
wrapped around his and crossed over his chest, making a double-  
embrace that radiated Qui-Gon's love for him as well as ritual  
protection.  Instead of pushing his consciousness down, Obi-Wan  
surfed on thin Force-ripples that spiralled out from their  
connection, letting his attention go.

He didn't have any intention of sleeping through this.


End file.
